Topic: Software

Coming on the heels of numerous complaints regarding Apple's new Maps app introduced with iOS 6 on Wednesday, the company has issued a statement saying the service is a work in progress and will get better with time.

Hours after Apple released OS X 10.8.2 Mountain Lion and iOS 6 on Wednesday, the company rolled out updates for the consumer level iPhoto and the professional grade Aperture image organization and editing apps, granting both apps access to Shared Photo Streams.

A report on Thursday claims a Virgin Australia passenger using an iPhone running iOS 6 beta was prompted to save a digital boarding pass to Passbook, hinting that air carriers are readying support for Apple's forthcoming organization app for coupons, membership and other barcode-based assets.

Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac officially launched to the public on Tuesday, offering new features like support for Apple's Retina display MacBook Pro, along with improved performance and faster startup times.

Oracle on Thursday released a patch for the Java 1.7 runtime, plugging a recently discovered security hole that allowed malware to take over any operating system when a user visits a malicious website.

Parallels on Thursday launched the latest version of its machine virtualization software, Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac, for owners of current Parallels customers, offering a slew of performance improvements and new features like support for Apple's Retina display-toting MacBook Pro. New customers will be able to purchase Parallels 8 on Sept. 4.

VMware on Thursday announced its new virtualization software Fusion 5, with 70 new features including a design that takes advantage of the latest features in Mountain Lion, and optimization for Microsoft's forthcoming Windows 8.

The Motion Pictures Expert Group has issued a new video standards draft that promises to deliver twice the video quality at the same size, or alternatively, identical video quality at half the data rate as today's MPEG-4 H.264 standard.

Almost two years after Apple introduced FaceTime, Google and Microsoft are battling to introduce their own video chat acquisitions as new Internet web standards, while FaceTime remains proprietary to Apple.